Two Reasons for no Utilitarianism

post by False Name (False Name, Esq.) · 2023-02-25T19:51:47.743Z · LW · GW · 3 comments

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Utilitarianism is the de facto model of alignment because, what shared by all humans - even the intellectually disabled, the oddities is their being in human bodies, it is presumed they all feel pain, and by the same means, pleasure. So this forum and others insist on utility, and value. 

But consider: utilitarianism  is to make people feel pleasured, hence by assumption happy (and is implicitly worthy of alignment then). But J.S. Mill once famously asks himself, in essence:

Q: If you enact these reforms and changes to society from utilitarianism (if you align society to utilitarianism, that is), these reforms that are to make everyone, so yourself, happy - will that make you happy?

A: No.

And  plunged into depression for years. But the salient point: by assumption, utility makes everyone happy; by assumption of course Mill should have replied yes. So why no?

The answers may vary, though still amount to the same reason. Such as: if values are arbitrary, each is cancelled by its opposite, which must exist if arbitrary is any, and if negative goals are included. More importantly, if we have some one value, that values are to be valued, so much as to enact for, not only to want them - then we have a value which has no opposite in utilitarianism. Even if some value produces good if only it is valued as-such (value the thought of beloved, e.g.) - but that must be enacted, thought-of(ital.), else the value is lost, and no well-being can come from it. 

Conversely if only valuing is enough - but the object of the value may vanish, if not actively kept, and the value without object brings no well-being; is arguably no value, anyway. And we have danger of infinite regress: value valuing to value value of valuing to... Resolvable only by obtaining what is outside of wanting, and makes possible wanting, or necessitates it.

But in that case: goals are not arbitrary at all; there is some value over humanity, over anything that can have or enact values whatsoever - and utilitarianism is only to find values therefrom, and ways of enacting what necessitates values, and values springing from necessity. All that would remain is to find that over-value, to find it, by reason; utilitarianism is deontology (all this has been noted before).

Besides, presumably humans can alter their goals; in fact they can. Rather than align to furnish people with positive social interaction which is so much in vogue, why not rather modify their physiology to tolerate loneliness without loss, for instance? Surely that requires fewer resources and eliminates the possibility of negative social interaction (Nota bene, please, this observation means, if we align to mere values of humanity: AI can simply modify the humans, so to alter their values and call it a win; AI aligns you to AI. In general, for fulfillment of any human value, to make the human value it, seems absolutely the easiest, for any case).

Too, Omohundro's "drives", what are they but values of self and one's work transmuted to subgoals of any goal? And what if the AI is sentient, has separate values, why should human values be perforce "better" than AI; why shouldn't AI modify humans, anyway, not as a question of values, but of necessary superiority? Why hold value against what is superior? Have humans any distinct value of goal-content maintenance?

So much for their values, whereas observe: the "highest" of human values, oft noted: "greater love hath no one than this", self-sacrifice for others, is motivated by a commitment to a higher goal which makes others possible, as noted. "Meta-values" of cooperation and self-sacrifice, even to reproduction, to that which makes human, makes any known, life possible. Commandos and martyrs go toward near certain death, because they think some goal was worth their lives: we offer help to those that need help so they can rejoin us and be part of our community and its - our, as part of it - goals, and more: if we need help, by acting so now, we become worthy of it, can expect to receive help ("fighting for the person beside you", writ large and small).

We need not the "small" seemingly easily attainable goals of humans, even as a whole, aligned-for, but paradoxically may find a "big" cosmic goal, one for which thus-fratricidal sub-goals are counterproductive, so excluded, easier to safely align for.

The alternative is [LW · GW] ; Cetera censeo Carthaginem reaedificari; thank you for being part of this effort, too.

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